Category Archives: whirligig

DC Motor Whirligig Generates Power

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Everyone knows that if you spin the shaft of a DC motor, it will generate power. [Vapsvus] has found a novel way to do this with no direct mechanical connection to the shaft. He simply taped a loop of string around to the motor can. This effectively turns the motor into a whirligig. Flip the motor to give the string a few twists, then pull on the two loops. The string unwinds and then winds back up, just like the toy we all grew up with.

The interesting thing is that the motor generates usable power when being spun like …read more

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Paper Toy Can Save Lives

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Although there is a lot of discussion about health care problems in big countries like the United States, we often don’t realize that this is a “first world” problem. In many places, obtaining health care of any kind can be a major problem. In places where water and electricity are scarce, a lot of modern medical technology is virtually unobtainable. A team from Standford recently developed a cheap, easily made centrifuge using little more than paper, scrap material like wood or PVC pipe, and string.

A centrifuge is a device that spins samples to separate them and–to be effective–they need …read more

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